MONTGOMERY, Alabama --- A bill to close loopholes in Alabama’s Open Meetings Act was among those that died when the legislative session ended Thursday night.

Sen. Cam Ward of Alabaster, who sponsored the bill and negotiated to bring it to the brink of passing, said that means the state will now go “over a year with a very ambiguous open meetings law.”

“It’s a defeat for me, but also a defeat for the people of Alabama,” Ward said.

Proponents of the bill, including the Alabama Press Association, say that several recent rulings by the state Supreme Court have weakened the law, which is intended to make sure that government bodies do their business in public and let the public know when they are meeting.

It would have made these changes to the Open Meetings Act, which was passed in 2005:

-- Added new restrictions against serial meetings, which happen when members of a public board meet in small groups to avoid telling the public. A court ruling involving the Montgomery County school board created the need to close that loophole, proponents said.

-- Provided that any citizen of the state can sue a board for violating the act and be entitled to penalties assessed against that board. A court ruling raised the question over who has standing to bring a claim.

--Clarified that the Legislature and its committees are subject to the law. A ruling involving the way the Alabama Accountability Act passed in 2013 said that the state Constitution allows the Legislature to set its own rules and that provision trumps claims of the Legislature violating the Open Meetings Act.

“At the end of the day, the Supreme Court gutted the Open Meetings Act, and we in the Legislature did not fix it,” Ward said.